Free Dead Reign by T. A. Pratt

a knife wasn’t sporting, but Marla was past the point of caring about sport. She wanted to kill this guy. If she needed to find out who he was later, maybe she’d bring Ayres out of retirement and get him to interrogate the guy’s corpse. She came at him, ready to flick out her blade and finish this, but he moved, still faster than her eye could comprehend, twisted her wrist so hard she cried out and dropped the blade, and tossed her off to one side like an empty beer bottle. The dagger fell in slow motion at first, then clattered to the pavement as normal time reasserted itself. Marla groaned. She hadn’t been tossed around like this in a while. She mumbled a little analgesic spell to numb the pain in her wrist, and watched while grinning Mr. Death bent down to pick up her dagger.
    His scream, though not unexpected, was quite gratifying. His right hand was a spurting bloody mess, with most of his fingers dropping, severed, to the ground.
    “My dagger,” Marla said. “It doesn’t like strangers.” She whistled, two low notes, and the dagger skittered along the ground and flew into her hand, hilt-first. After giving the blade a shake to cast off the stranger’s blood—every drop left the blade, which was part of the weapon’s magic—she tucked it into the sheath at her waist. Mr. Death whimpered and cradled his devastated hand. Sirens wailed, approaching fast. Somebody had seen the fight and called the cops. Marla wasn’t worried about the cops—she knew the mayor and the chief of police, and more important, they knew
her,
and what she really did for Felport—but she preferred to avoid the hassle. She considered trying again to kill him, now that he was wounded, but her time in the graveyard yesterday and the memories it prompted made her inclined to alternatives, like mercy. “You’re a good fighter,” she said. “That was a nice workout, and some of those tricks I’ve never seen before, but you better believe I’ll learn them soon. This isn’t the place to make a name for yourself, though. Leave town. If I hear you’re still hanging around later, I’ll make the loss of a few fingers seem like a pleasant morning.”
    He didn’t answer, just stared at her and bled.
    “You take care now.” She walked away, leaving Mr. Death to gather up his fingers. A good magical surgeon could reattach them like new. Maybe he knew somebody who could do that back where he’d come from. Wherever the hell that was. She’d make some inquiries.
    “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so,” Booth drawled, “but this place has the distinct odor of age and staleness.”
    “The dead man complains to me of odors?” Ayres said from his folding chair by the window. “Make yourself useful by cleaning the place, then. I didn’t bring you back to life so you could bitch and moan.”
    “Men of quality don’t clean.” Booth was looking at himself in a full-length mirror. He’d been doing that ever since Ayres cast a glamour to cover his hideousness. “This really isn’t a very good likeness, Ayres. The tattoo on my hand is absent, for one, and I think my cheekbones should be higher.”
    Ayres had conjured Booth’s illusory form from vague memories of the assassin’s photograph in documentaries about Abraham Lincoln. He could make Booth look like anyone, but the assassin wanted to appear as he had in life. Vain bastard. “You’re welcome to return to your prior state, and go around looking like an overdone piece of bacon, if you prefer.”
    Booth joined him at the window. “My apologies, sir. You’ve done a great kindness for me, and I won’t forget that. May I ask, what are you looking for out that window?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. A plume of smoke. An earthquake. People running and screaming. Some sign of the titanic battle between Marla Mason and Death. Though I suppose it’s likely to be a quieter affair.”
    “Mmm. If I’d known there was a duel in the offing, I would have offered my services as